Hybrid State Constraint Adaptive Disturbance Rejection Controller for a Mobile Worm Bio-Inspired Robot

This study presents the design of a hybrid active disturbance rejection controller (H-ADRC) which regulates the gait cycle of a worm bio-inspired robotic device (WBRD). The WBRD is designed as a full actuated six rigid link robotic manipulator. The controller considers the state restrictions in the device articulations; this means the maximum and minimum angular ranges, to avoid any possible damage to the structure. The controller uses an active compensation method to estimate the unknown dynamics of the WBRD by means of an extended state observer. The sequence of movements for the gait cycle of a WBRD is represented as a class of hybrid system by alternative reference frameworks placed at the first and the last link. The stability analysis employs a class of Hybrid Barrier Lyapunov Function to ensure the fulfillment of the angular restrictions in the robotic device. The proposed controller is evaluated using a numerical simulation system based on the virtual version of the WBRD. Moreover, experimental results confirmed that the H-ADRC may endorse the realization of the proposed gait cycle despite the presence of perturbations and modeling uncertainties. The H-ADRC is compared against a proportional derivative (PD) controller and a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller. The H-ADRC shows a superior performance as a consequence of the estimation provided by the homogeneous extended state observer.